Dec. 14: In a genre defined by massive open worlds and do-anything mentality, at least some direction has to be given early on lest the game leave the player wandering the wilderness aimlessly. The opening moments must set the tone of the world, giving you some context for the adventure about to unfold and how you fit into it.

Of the many, many MMOs I have played (at least two!), no game has done this better to date than The Old Republic. The three amazing cinematics released prior to TOR's launch serve as the intro cinematics. The cinematics do an excellent job of showcasing each of the playable classes while immediately setting the scene for the state of the galaxy. Immediately after creating a character, you're then met with the traditional Star Wars scrolling text screen, which sets things up specifically for the class you have chosen. Then, like the films, the camera pans down to reveal a planet or space craft before it takes you to a loading screen, after which you're put in your character's shoes for the first time ever.

By the end of the Star Wars theme you ought to be pretty pumped to get in and play -- exactly what an MMO intro should do.

The Old Republic's character creator is, to be perfectly frank, not as strong as I was hoping it would be. It's not for lack of options (there are quite a few sliders and a lot of them have dozens of possible options), it's for where the emphasis was placed. The Star Wars universe is home to hundreds of different species of all shapes and sizes, and not all of them strictly adhere to the standard humanoid shape or size. Take a look at Yoda, for example.

So it's kind of a bummer that during character creation you are restricted to creating a shortish muscley-guy, a medium muscley-guy, a huge muscley-guy and an average-sized but chunky-looking muscley-guy. Of all of the races in the Star Wars universe, the most exotic-looking race on offer is Twi'lek -- the guys with the fleshy tails (or Lekku) on their heads. And they're basically just blue/green humans with fleshy tails on their heads.

It's particularly disturbing if you want to make a female character, as all four options are near-identical. Only one of the choices is of a different height -- the other three just determine how big your chest/hips are (they maintain the same ratio).

Race choice then becomes pretty pointless. There are no racial bonuses or perks other than a purely cosmetic social ability (each race gets a different one), nor does race seem to, at least as far as I have seen, impact the story elements of the game at all.

Barring these frustrations, however, it's pretty tough to make a truly ugly looking character (take that as you will). All the bits and pieces you can tweak when creating your character fit with the art style and allow you to create your own backstory for your character. My cyborg Bounty Hunter, for example, has a scar over his left eye with a faintly-glowing cyborg eyepatch keeping it covered up. They're two separate elements of the creator which let me pretend he lost his eye somehow (perhaps in a space-champagne-bottle-opening accident).

Tomorrow I'll tell you about my experiences with Hutta, the starting area for Bounty Hunters and Sith Agents.

Dec. 15: Hutta, the swampy, polluted homeworld of the slug-like yet highly influential Hutts, is where my Bounty Hunter took his first breath of smoggy air in The Old Republic. For Empire players, Hutta is the starting world for both Bounty Hunters and Imperial Agents. It's traditionally a neutral planet, but for the sakes of not starting players off in a messy laser-filled bloodbath, only Imperial players will ever see its gross surface.

As a Bounty Hunter, my story began with a proposal from my bounty-hunting team -- that we enter the Great Hunt, earn a name for ourselves, and move onto riches. In true BioWare fashion, things rapidly go awry and bodies begin piling up. Mostly it was me causing all the death though. I'd decided pretty early on that my character's priorities would be thus: If I get the option to kill someone, I'll take it. Unless, that is, it sounds like I can get more credits from not killing someone. Then, if I get the chance, I'll kill them post-payment. As a playground for my evil and greedy schemes, Hutta offered a lot. As a general rule, anyone I interacted with in dialogue had about a 50% chance of winding up dead by the end of the conversation.

There were some particularly memorable encounters, such as very early on with the mother of a Sith apprentice, but most of the more promising quest chains seemed to end after the first or second part. The story quest in Hutta was very solid and presented a lot of cool moments and opportunities to be absolutely horrible to the citizenry of Hutta, but the rapid nature of the side quests meant I didn't often feel like I got to know them. My relationship with the characters only lasted as long as the task, then I moved on.

The landscape itself, although gloomy, is pretty well populated with quests and things to kill. There are three separate secrets (which I'll talk about in a small future update) scattered across the world, as well as several named bosses which obsessive explorers like myself will appreciate.

Hutta is laid out fairly logically for the most part, with the low-level starter area to the west and progressively tougher enemies to the east, but I found it weird that elite creatures (enemies that are tuned for two or more players) start springing up as early as level 5-6 for quests, and in relatively open areas where they can pretty easily gnaw someone's head off. Making some of the areas more obviously treacherous-looking could help, but so could shifting the elite quests closer to the end of the Hutta chain. Right now, I found myself grouping up for an hour in the middle of my Hutta experience and then ungrouping to finish it off. Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but group content should be climactic -- you should build towards entering this crazy-dangerous area, and feel like you've achieved something when you come out the other side.

That said, Hutta was over very quickly, so fitting a build-up in may have simply taken up too much real estate. Hutta touched on all the most basic elements of gameplay pretty thoroughly -- solo play, grouping, boss fights, story elements and choices, and it even gave me my first companion. I'll miss Hutta a little, but I'm excited to move onto Dromund Kaas.